Name: Sauce for Hashes of Mutton or Beef
Ingredients: bones and fragments of cooked mutton or beef; boiling water; 6 black peppercorns; 6 allspice berries; a small bundle of parsley

Why it works: Allspice and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,289 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sauce for Hashes of Mutton or Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the bones and fragments of the joint.
Place them in a stew pan and cover with boiling water.
Add 6 black peppercorns and 6 allspice berries.
Add a small bundle of parsley.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,289 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Mutton + parsleytop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,915 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Mutton + allspicetop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together322 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).